


The Loon In The Moon

by Alpherae



Series: Seven For A Secret [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Aftermath of a pyrrhic victory, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Betrayal and other nasty things, Minor AU, No beta we die like lemmings, One Year Later, The Blades as family, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-26 10:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21372382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alpherae/pseuds/Alpherae
Summary: Pyrrhic victories leave the survivors prey to guilt and might-have-beens. Strange things happen when you talk to the Lord of the Never-There under the wing of the Dragon-God of Time.
Relationships: Baurus & Jena, Jena/Martin Septim
Series: Seven For A Secret [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540762
Kudos: 12





	The Loon In The Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Posting to get this off my hard-drive. This is only not My First Fanfic because Cuckoo's Egg was started first (and is still not finished). We're talking eight years unposted, no beta, and at least four name and/or pronoun changes for my Problem Child in that time (seriously, the last was an hour ago). To be blunt, _I_ like it, but no guarantees of quality here. 
> 
> Not exactly a standalone (cf: Cuckoo's Egg) but all you really need to know is that Hainab was an Ashlander, and Ashlanders do _not_ like the Empire.

_The Temple of the One, the Imperial City, Cyrodiil  
20th day of Sun’s Dusk (Warrior’s Festival, Summoning of Mehrunes Dagon), 4E 1_

  
Baurus opened the door to the temple cautiously and looked inside. Jena was standing beside the broken columns, in full dress armour with her helm at her feet. The chill rain had soaked her hair and dripped from her cloak, but she remained staring at the great statue of Akatosh, barely even shivering.  
  
The thunder cracked and rumbled overhead unnoticed, but she jumped as he laid a careful hand on her shoulder. Her face was pale and empty, only dark eyes betraying that not all the water on her cheeks was rain.  
  
“I thought I might find you here, Sister,” Baurus said. “We missed you at the celebrations.”  
  
Jena blinked, and drew a shuddering breath. She tried to turn away, stumbling, and he caught her arm before she fell.  
  
“I'm sorry, Baurus, I... I can't. It's just...”  
  
He tugged with the catches at his shoulder, and pulled his own cloak loose to wrap around her.  
  
“I know, I know. The Grandmaster knows it too, so don't worry about that. Here, at least we can get out of the rain. Fine pair of fools we look.”  
  
The older man guided her over to sit in a dry spot under the statue. The marble felt like solid ice and the rain trickled over the altar onto the floor, but the statue was always a little warmer than it should be and she leaned against the stone leg as though it was an old friend. Baurus watched her settle down, and frowned slightly, glancing back at the door.  
  
“I'll be back in a moment,” he told her, and splashed away. She heard a muffled discussion outside, and the other Blade came back in, pushing the door closed behind him with his elbow. He carried a bottle in each hand, and put them on the floor within reach before sitting down beside her.  
  
“The guards will make sure no one else comes in unless they're a Blade,” he said. He opened one bottle easily and passed it to her before opening the other for himself and taking a swig.  
  
“It's just hot spiced apple juice,” he added. “I think they've added a bit of brandy to it, but not enough to do any harm.”  
  
Jena glared. “I'm not that–” she began, but Baurus interrupted.  
  
“Believe me, this night of all nights, I would prefer to get well and truly drunk. The problem is, Jauffre told me to find you and stick close,” he said and took another drink before continuing. “So, we can either go look for oblivion in a wine cask or we can stay here, up to you either way. Unfortunately, it's too cold to do both and the Grandmaster would kick me from here to Elyswer if you turned up dead from hypothermia. Or from anything else either.”  
  
The woman slumped back and bit her lip. Finally, she took a drink and Baurus relaxed a little.  
  
“Jauffre told you, didn't he?” she asked softly.  
  
Baurus shook his head. “He didn't need to. We're Blades, Jena! We're supposed to pick up on things like that.”  
  
“What do the others think of me?”  
  
“They were happy, Sister. Everything was going wrong, failure after failure, but you reminded us why we kept trying. You made him smile, Jena. He looked away from that book when you spoke to him, every single time. No one else could manage that.”  
  
Jena closed her eyes. “I distracted him,” she said, her voice thin and empty. “If I hadn't… hadn't talked to him… hadn't made him notice me… I slowed him down.”  
  
“Jena...”  
  
“I wanted him to notice me; I wanted his attention so badly. But when he was talking to me he wasn't studying the book, and we ran out of time because of me, he didn't find the ritual in time because of me, so Mehrunes came and the Dragon left and it's all my fault!”  
  
Baurus sighed and shifted over to put an arm around her shoulders. Jena was weeping again, her face blank as a statue.  
  
“Jena, Bladesister, it wasn't you. I remember what he was like before Jauffre assigned you to a shift on bodyguard duty. Priest or not, that book was tainting him. Those first few days, every morning I woke up afraid to find a withered shell, a broken twisted thing that could be no kind of emperor. Or worse.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “There were times I thought I saw Mehrunes himself looking out of Martin's eyes. It was never more than a flash, but if it had gone on too long—who knows what could have happened.”  
  
_I’d bet Jauffre did,_ Baurus thought to himself. _Otherwise he would have interfered with my little ‘precautions’. __Thank Talos they were never needed._  
  
“You pulled him back from that, Jena,” he said aloud. “Without you, he'd never have lasted long enough to work out the ritual.”  
  
Jena calmed a little and pulled away, and lifted the bottle in a shaky hand. Baurus settled back against the altar, watching drifts of pink and orange light cross the sky. The rain had stopped while they talked and the clouds cleared back to reveal stars that shone like gemstones. It seemed odd that the aurora could be visible so far south, and he wondered idly if there had been other things added to the juice besides brandy.  
  
They sat in damp, companionable silence for a time, until Jena broke it with a sigh.  
  
“I'm sorry.”  
  
“Nothing to be sorry for.”  
  
“I never thought about him as the Emperor. I never wanted to think about what would happen after he went to the Imperial City. There was just something about him, personally, as though he was the only real thing in a world of ghosts... he made me feel real too.”  
  
Baurus considered this for a time. “Not the first time I've heard that, oddly enough. You remember Hainab, don't you?” he grinned. “The ‘Hero of Kvatch’, and how she hated that!”  
  
“Speak of the daedra, and it shall appear. Really should be more careful, Baurus.”  
  
Both of the Blades looked up, startled to see a third figure standing in the shadow of the doorway. It paused for a moment, waiting for them to speak, then came forward into the starlight, changing with each step. An elderly dunmer in leathers paled to a robed altmer, shrank to a half-dressed bosmer child, swelled again into an iron-clad nord, leaned forward and grew claws, a tail and fur that melted into scales wrapped with rich linen. Male, female, armored, clothed and unclothed, flickering through a score of races, shapes and states.  
  
A redguard in akaviri armor reminded Baurus irresistibly of his mother, ten years dead in Niben Bay, but the figure shaded again from red-brown to blue-gray and it was a young dunmer in polished chitin who sat down on the drier edge of the round altar and grinned at them.  
  
“Jena, Baurus. Been a while.”  
  
Baurus looked at her in disbelief. It did look like Hainab, although the tattoo on her cheek glowed as red as her eyes and the surface of her armor, a full suit now, gleamed like mother-of-pearl. A swept-back helm dangled from one hand, and the other held a spear of the same material against her shoulder with a...  
  
“Hainab, is that an eyeball?” he asked, confused and slightly queasy.  
  
Hainab swung the spear around to inspect the object impaled on the tip with interest.  
  
“Hmm, believe so. Good guess, that.” She leant the spear back again her shoulder and turned her amused gaze on the two puzzled Blades. Out of the corner of his eye, Baurus could see Jena cast a wary look at the bottle in her hand, and he wasn’t surprised when she shrugged and took another drink. Clearly, she felt that whatever drugged delusions it caused couldn’t be worse than reality right now.  
  
On the other hand, the older Blade was starting to wonder. The course of his work had taken him into some odd places, and he’d kept his cover by whatever means necessary. He knew the effects of moon sugar and skooma, and other, stranger things, and this didn’t have the feel of an altered state of mind.  
  
"So," he said, pushing himself up to sit on the altar rather than lean against it. "What have you been up to? Last I heard, you'd been seen outside Bravil, but that was months ago now.”  
  
Hainab shrugged at him. "Got caught up in another Lord's little games. Won."  
  
"Won what?" Baurus asked.  
  
The dunmer tilted her head and tapped thoughtfully on her tattooed cheek. The red glow turned the tip of her finger into a rich purple, and when her hand shifted to brush her lips a smear of colour followed its path along her skin and stained her mouth black.  
  
"Life? Power? Free will?" She shrugged again, and leaned over to nudge Jena with her foot. "You of all people should understand that mortal whims mean nothing when the Powers are bickering."  
  
"It wasn't a whim," Jena snapped. Moonlight glanced off the edges of the shattered windows, spinning glancing colour across her skin. For an instant, Baurus saw a woman with bright gems laid across her brow, a queen strong and stern, then the younger Blade turned her head away and the illusion was lost.  
  
"It was hopeless, not a whim," she whispered, wrapping her arms about her shoulders.  
  
“Not even so hopeless as all that,” Hainab pointed out. “You got a ch-”  
  
“Enough!” Baurus broke in quickly. “We're not speaking of that, Hainab, not outside a safehold.”  
  
The other tipped her head to smile at him sharply. “You think anyone will believe what they heard tonight when morning comes?”  
  
“Please, Hainab,” Jena whispered. “For Martin's sake?”  
  
The two women watched each other for a time. Baurus watched them both, holding his breath, feeling like he was back in the Interregnum when even a whisper in the wrong place could bring a life crashing down.  
  
Hainab shifted in her seat on the altar, leaning forward to look Jena in the eye. Her staff rested against the right side of her neck and from Baurus's position it appeared as if she was impaled, the eyeball looking down on them all.  
  
“If you had asked for the sake of the Empire,” she said gently. “Or even just the Emperor, it would have been your end. Would have destroyed you, Baurus, all of your line.”  
  
Jena never flinched, her eyes glazed, entranced. Baurus felt his hand slide towards the dagger at his belt.  
  
“Even Martin, had he lived,” the dunmer whispered. “He was never to be the Emperor you desired so. I would have make sure of it.”  
  
Baurus took a deep breath, forcing his hands to grip the edge of the cold altar until his fingers ached. “I don't believe you,” he said firmly. “You _liked_ Martin, or you'd never have helped him in the first place. I don't know why you want us to believe the worst of you, but–”  
  
The staff rose twisting in Hainab's hands and slammed down again, splashing them all with icy water and sending droplets up to drift in the air like mist, like bubbles, like glass. Misshapen spheres swung around them on a lunar lattice, fragmentary reflections glancing over each surface, and Baurus caught his breath as the images grew clear.  
  
The death of Martin Septim. Each droplet that drifted near showed his Emperor, dying.  
  
In battle. In ambush. In court. In a duel. By betrayal. By deceit. By accident. A sword. A knife. The executioner's axe. A tree branch. Poison. Tainted food. Tainted water. Disease. Suicide.  
  
At Hainab's hands. At those of a stranger. A friend. A guard. A courtier. A diplomat. A Blade. A Duke of Anvil, or Skingrad. The Chancellor. Jauffre. Willing. Unwilling. Unknowing. Jena. _Baurus_.  
  
Baurus closed his eyes, concentrating on _cold and damp and Jena's sobbing._  
  
“Did you think old Four-Arms was all you had to fear?” Hainab asked gently. “Martin dies, and the Schemer Princess wins.”  
  
“And if he hadn't?” Baurus asked in return.  
  
He heard the scrape and thump of wood on stone as the staff moved again, and the eyeball with it. Orbiting water changed its course, singing like brushed crystal through the air. He opened his eyes to a new arrangement, hoping to see something better.  
  
It wasn't.  
  
This time, the Emperor lived and Baurus wished he had not. Often the progression was far more subtle than death, difficult for even a court-trained Blade to see, but sooner or later—always too late—the taint became too clear to ignore.  
  
Martin was never raised to be Emperor, he remembered, never played in the halls of the White-Gold Tower with noble children, never had the Blades to straighten and smooth his path. There was liking, even love between them, but not yet the bone-deep trust that his father and half-brothers had known. Martin would have been too willing to take advice from others, the Blades too eager to regain their old bond, and Hainab would have led them all slowly into an Empire that was nothing but a mockery.  
  
Heirs spoilt rotten, or sacrificed, or set against each other for the right to rule. An Emperor with only concubines, or no willing consort at all. Consorts betrayed or turned traitor. Imperial worship turned to the Daedric Princes, or twisted to all the worst aspects of the Divines. Everything he had feared during the Crisis. Things he had not known to fear.  
  
The only kindness was that Jena seldom appeared, and never in the darkest images.  
  
Jena herself was as pale as the stone around them, her eyes wide and bleached to silver in the moonlight. Her gaze flicked from bubble to bubble, searching. Suddenly, she turned to Baurus, panicked.  
  
“Where is it, do you see it?”  
  
Baurus blinked. “What?”  
  
“It's got to be there,” she insisted. “It turned out alright, I know it! Where is it?”  
  
Hainab tilted her head, watching Jena like a cat. “You wish to see something in particular?” she asked.  
  
The other woman shifted, her armour grating against the stone as she rolled to her knees. The cloak slipped from her shoulders when she moved, dragged by its own damp weight into the shallow water, leaving her throat bare and vulnerable as she tipped her head back to stare Hainab in the eye.  
  
“I, let me see Martin alive and well,” she said, and shuddered. “And, and a good man.”  
  
“One perfect possibility,” Hainab murmured. “Very well.”  
  
She smiled just a little. The staff shifted one last time, rasping against the paving for barely a quarter-turn. The droplets began to fall, slowly, dropping one by one to the puddles below. Baurus flinched back when the touch of water on his hand drove the false memory it carried into his mind's eye—_the Emperor smiles and his bones twist under his skin—_but Jena never moved, letting them soak into her hair and run down her face like tears.  
  
Finally, there was only one left, a single flawless orb drifting between them, no bigger than the tip of his thumb. Jena lifted her hands carefully, plucking it from the air like a dandelion puff, impossibly whole. Baurus watched her stare into the bubble, and he shifted off the altar to kneel beside her, close enough to see for himself.  
  
Within the water, Martin Septim was smiling, wrapped in a priest's robes with only his face to show his lineage. A little girl was cradled in his arms and Jena leant on his shoulder, the three of them laughing together as Baurus himself let an older boy chase him around the Arboretum with a wooden sword.  
  
One perfect impossibility, shaped and shattered by the Mythic Dawn.  
  
Baurus turned to look up at the creature that wore Hainab's face.  
  
“Sheogorath,” he said, and It grinned back at him. “What happened to Hainab? Is she even still alive?”  
  
“Two Princes made a wager, and another played too,” the Madgod lilted cheerfully. “Stole their pawn from the very start, before they ever knew.”  
  
“That didn't answer my question,” Baurus growled.  
  
“Oh, it did, it did, as a matter of fact,” It replied. “But what matters it to you?”  
  
“She was my friend!”  
  
Silence fell in the damp temple, split by the occasional plinking of raindrops. Jena ignored them both, too absorbed by might-have-beens to even move.  
  
The Madgod stared at him, equally entranced. “Are you friends with the stones in the road as well?” It asked finally. “Do you apologise to the rocks you break in the mine?”  
  
Baurus spluttered, trying desperately to follow the line of conversation. He noticed too late that It had slid off the altar to crouch in front of him, wrapping cool, hard fingers around his wrist that rasped against his skin like sandstone. The Madgod's breath felt gritty against his cheek, and he could smell ashes and smoke as It whispered in his ear.  
  
“Hainab was never a real person.”  
  
Starlight spun around him, bright colours swirling in a cacophonous gallimaufry over his head, glazing the broken stonework into ice and filling the air with sunlight. Baurus blinked up at the sky above, clear and blue as any winter's morning, and swore with chattering teeth. His skin felt clammy and damp, his neck hurt from the way his head was wedged against the altar, and the bottle he'd only half finished held nothing but rainwater.  
  
Jena looked up when he moved, tucking something away in her scarf, and the twist of her lips might have been bitter but it was the first time in a year that he had seen her smile.


End file.
